Is the Recession Finally Over

BBC News - Was 2013 the year NI's economy finally started to recover?.
The UK and Ireland were in deep recession long before ordinary people realized. In fact 2 years into the recession a conversation with a guy from Wicklow just showed me how out of touch ordinary people were. The guy reckoned the recession wasn't affecting him because he didn't borrow or over spend during the boom years. Now at first sight this seems pretty reasonable but if you look deeper into the statement you soon realize how out of touch we all were. This guy earned just under €800 euro a week, a good wage for the manual job he did. Now here's the problem, this guy didn't borrow any money, he only spent what he earned and he didn't get into debt. The problem here is where the money came from to pay his €800 wages, it was borrowed or at least somewhere down the line the money was borrowed. So through no fault of his own this guy was affected by the recession. Six months after the chat the guy had lost his job and was in a new one paying half his original wage, he was lucky enough to be able to adapt and because he hadn't over stretched he is now surviving on his 50% wage cut. The main point here is that it took over 2 years for this guy to see the recession in action.
The thing here is that just as it took 2 years to see the recession at the beginning it's going to be the same in the opposite direction, and being out of recession in no way reflects on ordinary people for a least a couple of years. What makes it worse is the fact the the economy shrunk so much,  being out of recession does not immediately equate to a recovery, so it could take many years longer for us ordinary people to see it.
This is not meant to be a depressing post, we have to start somewhere and the news of recovery in 2013 is great, just don't expect magic, we're still a few years away from where we all want to be but we're getting there.
Just like every other business at Bridal Gems the recession has hit hard, we have struggled trying to keep things going over the past 4 years and are always trying new ways to re-invent our business and keep our current market position. This isn't an easy process and we've had to make hard decisions over the past few years, some good some not so good, but over all and with hind sight I don't think there was much we could have done differently. For example we closed our shop Glitzy Bitz in Enniskillen before Christmas, the shop had been opened in an effort to increase our market share and get more local business. It was only there for a couple of years and just didn't work out. It hasn't affected our online business in any negative was so it was probably worth a shot at the time, but again with hind sight more effort in the website might have been better use of our resources.
So regardless of what the future brings, we'll keep the struggle going and hopefully in the next couple of years business will start to grow again and we will finally SEE the recession ending.

Wedding Tiaras

A wedding tiara is more than just a piece of jewellery, for thousands of years tiaras have been worn as decorations and status symbols. Today the humble wedding tiara can add sparkle and glamour in equal measure, the bride wearing a beautiful rhinestone crystal tiara can feel like a princess.
A brides tiara is as much a keepsake of the wedding day as other more obvious things like the video or photo album. Often tiaras are passed from generation to generation as the something borrowed on the wedding day, a great way to keep traditions going. It should never be underestimated just how precious a gift of a tiara can be, be it new or secondhand a bride getting a tiara is going to treasure it for the rest of her life.
Bridal Gems have some great advice on their website about looking after all crystal jewellery and there's even some information on how to store tiaras. This is of course important if you plan to keep your tiara for the next generation or even just to keep as a keepsake.
Don't be fooled into thinking that because a tiara is not very expensive, it's any less valuable than a piece of jewellery costing thousands of pounds. Value is in the sentiment of the piece and not necessarily in what it costs.